London Banter - View Single Post - Tories 20BN railway to replace Heathrow expansion (St Pancras isHeathrow T6, again)

Robert[_2_] · September 30th 08, 09:31 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

On 2008-09-29 19:11:14 +0100, said:

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:55:57 +0100, Robert
wrote:

I think you have misunderstood Malthouse’s remarks about trains’
speeds. He compared Brunel’s approach to civil engineering, which
allowed for speeds in the future to be much higher than those current
in 1833, to that of others active at the time. Malthouse then stated
that “And he was right: trains can run at well over 150 mph today.” In
my reading this sentence does not refer directly to speeds on the GWML.

Brunel designed a level straight route because the available engines
were too underpowered to climb hills at speed and the shortest
distance between two points is a straight line. He was designing the
best route for the trains he had at the time and wasn't considering
what might be running on it 150 years later. The fact that the route
is suitable for modern 1970s high speed trains is just luck and not
design.

What you say is true, but it is not the whole story. Before Brunel
became Engineer to the nascent London and Bristol railway others, such
as William Brunton and Henry Price had tried to survey a route: they
proposed a route via Bath, Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge, Hungerford,
Newbury, Reading and so to London. W. H. Townsend was building a
tramway (the Bristol and Gloucester Railway) from the Floating Harbour
to coal mines near Mangotsfield - it was suggested that this be
extended to London.

Although these proposals had to use the same locomotive technology as
Brunel, in no way could these be described as high speed routes. The
organising committee of the London and Bristol railway intended to hold
a competition to select a surveyor. Brunel said that he would not enter
for the competition because he was convinced it was the wrong approach,
but he would agree to survey one route from London to Bristol. It would
not be the cheapest but it would be the best. He was appointed to the
post in March 1833.

By August of that year the initials 'GWR' had started to appear in his
diary - in his imagination he had already journeyed far beyond Bristol
to Cornwall and even New York City. It was indeed, a Great Western
Railway. Not for him 'Liverpool and Manchester', 'London and
Birmingham' or 'Canterbury and Whitstable'.

The 7 foot gauge was adopted for speed. After initial teething troubles
with the track, in March 1840 'Firefly' drew the Directors' Special
train (following the opening of the railway to Reading through the
cutting at Sonning) from Twyford to Paddington, start to stop, in 37
minutes at an average speed of 50 mph. This was unheard of in 1840.
Being able to run at 125mph on the GWR's trackbed without tilt and
balises is not luck - it is the result of superb engineering.

I rest my case. Brunel thought and built on the grand scale. Nowadays
Britain does not (generally - there are exceptions) do public works
well. New hospitals seem always to be a size too small; Stansted has
been made uncomfortable at a time of increasing numbers of passengers
by reducing the circulating floor space by building shops; Heathrow is
cramped, an artifical island in the Thames Estuary with enough space
for sufficient independent runways would seem to be a good solution.
But don't fill the buildings with shops....

Robert